


A Brisk Summer Day in the Depths of Hell

by FindingTarshish, Kotobird



Series: Serenade Resurrection AU [4]
Category: Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Genre: Discussions of Past Trauma, F/F, Feels, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, visiting graves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FindingTarshish/pseuds/FindingTarshish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kotobird/pseuds/Kotobird
Summary: On this day eight years ago, a young girl came face to face with hell itself.
Relationships: Amou Kanade/Serena Cadenzavna Eve
Series: Serenade Resurrection AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822039
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	A Brisk Summer Day in the Depths of Hell

“So what is it this time?” Chris grumbled, as the briefing began.

The Commander crossed his arms, and leaned against his desk on the bridge. “Oh, the usual,” Genjuro answered. “This time it’s a crime ring in Osaka. Got their hands on some Alca Noise.”

“Ugh,” Maria groaned. “This again? Where do they keep getting them?”

“I imagine the black market,” Tsubasa said. “If we can, we should try to track their supplier and raid them.”

“We’re working on that,” Fujitaka said. “But progress is slow. Whoever it is is quite good at covering their tracks.”

“We need two wielders on the ground to subdue the Yakuza and gather intel on their supplier,” Genjuro said.

“Sorry, I can’t go.” Kanade said, scratching the back of her neck nervously. The rest of them looked at her with surprise; usually the redhead tried to volunteer for every mission, and had to be shouted down.

It surprised them all even more when the Commander placed a hand on her shoulder. “I understand,” he said, patting her back. “It’s today, isn’t it?”

Kanade nodded. She seemed… sad, an emotion no one would ever— even subconsciously— associate with her.

Serena only half paid attention to the rest of the briefing as she worried about her partner. She watched as Kanade fidgeted with her sleeves the entire time. The moment the meeting was over, Serena tried to get her attention, but Kanade just swept out of the room without saying a word to anyone.

As the other seven wielders filed out, Serena pulled the Commander aside. “Commander? Can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Of course, Serena-kun,” he said in his usual booming voice.

Serena took a deep breath. “Is something going on with Kanade? She seems… upset, and you seemed to know what was happening.”

He had a rare look of confusion on his face. “With how close you two are, I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.” he said.

“I…” Serena didn’t know what to say. “She hasn’t told me anything.” A part of her felt momentarily betrayed: why _hadn’t_ Kanade said anything? At this point, they were as close as family, and she'd think her family would talk to her about _anything_. Especially, as Genjuro said, something so important.

“It’s not my place to tell you her secrets,” Genjuro said. “But… be there for her today.” He seemed uncharacteristically solemn.

Serena furrowed her brow at the cryptic comment, but she knew he had already said all he was willing to say. Pressing him for information would accomplish nothing. “I will,” she said. “Thanks.”

He smiled. “Well, what are you waiting around here for? Go to her, Serena-kun!”

Without a word, Serena turned on her heel and chased after her girlfriend.

* * *

Serena knocked on the door to Kanade’s apartment. “Hey... Kanade, you there?”

There was a rattle and a thud on the other side of the door as something was dropped, followed by a loud expletive. The lock rattled and Kanade opened it, dressed in a spring jacket as if she were planning to go out. “Serena? What are you doing here?” She seemed genuinely surprised. Her eyes looked puffy and bloodshot as if she had been crying recently.

“In the briefing, it sounded like something was wrong. I tried talking to the Commander…”

Kanade’s expression tightened. “And he told you?”

Serena shook her head. “He wouldn’t say. All he told me was that I should be here for you today. Kanade… what’s wrong?”

With a deep, shuddering breath, Kanade smiled slightly. “Seems the Old Man’s still looking after me after all these years.” She reached out and caressed Serena’s face. “ I… do you want to come with me?”

Serena could tell that she wasn’t going to get anything more out of her, but the commander’s words kept repeating in her head. She pulled Kanade into a hug, gently holding her head to her shoulder. “As long as I’m not imposing on anything.”

Kanade shook her head. “No… not at all.” She patted Serena’s back and pulled away. She grabbed a messenger bag from the floor, slung it over her shoulder, and offered Serena her hand. “Shall we?”

Serena noticed the pained smile on Kanade’s face as she took her hand and let herself be led out of the complex. They walked through the city hand in hand in silence. 

Even at the train station, Kanade didn’t say a word. She simply paid for their tickets quietly. Serena tried to pay her back, but the redhead just passed her the slip of paper. Tokyo to Gunma, via the Jōetsu Shinkansen, with a transfer at Maebashi onto the Agatsuma Line. 

Serena could tell that Kanade didn’t want to talk, so she just sat beside her, leaning against her, and holding her hand in unspoken support. When they took a moment to eat at a small cafe on the banks of the Karasu River, the Airgetlám wielder finally broke the silence. “Kanade, where are we going?”

Kanade looked away. “I…there’s something I have to do,” she said.

“In Gunma?” Serena asked.

She nodded. “Yeah…”

Realizing her girlfriend’s discomfort, Serena reached out and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I’m here for you.”

Kanade smiled gently, and brought Serena’s hand up to her face. “Thanks,” she said.

The two of them returned to the station and climbed back aboard. As the tracks wound into the mountains, they found themselves constantly jostled by the rough, bumpy ride. Nonetheless, they still gripped each other’s hands tightly. Never letting go of each other, they filed off the train and walked through the city.

Serena’s breath caught as Kanade led her to a small, crowded graveyard set in a rocky terrace on the side of a hill. Suddenly, the redhead’s melancholy made a horrible kind of sense. Kanade kept her past close to her chest and had never really wanted to talk about it, but Serena knew she harbored just as much pain as the rest of them.

Still silent, Kanade released Serena’s hand, took a small wooden bucket out of her bag, and filled it at a tap near the gate. With her head bowed, she quietly walked along the path. The only sound to be heard was the sloshing of water, the occasional tweet of birdsong, and the clink of their boots on the cobbles.

They stopped before a trio of mossy gravestones, two large granite blocks beside a smaller one. Serena’s breath caught as she read the name on the smallest grave.

天羽 琴愛

Amou Kotome

April 16, 2025 - August 2, 2037

Mutely, Kanade pulled out a plastic bag and began to clean the moss off gravestones. Without the slightest hesitation, Serena knelt beside her and began to help. Without a word between them, they peeled away the plants until two more names were revealed: Amou Rei, and Amou Iemitsu. For several minutes they scraped and scrubbed together until the two graves were spotless.

Kanade took a step back. With a sigh, she looked at their handwork. “Thanks,” she said quietly.

“Of course,” Serena said, wrapping her arms around Kanade in a comforting hug. “Were they… your family?”

She nodded. “Yeah,” Kanade sniffled. “‘Course they aren’t actually buried here. Finé saw to that.” She shifted, and returned Serena’s gentle embrace.

“What happened?” Serena asked. She hastily added “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to…”

Kanade released her and dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves. “No… you deserve to know.”

* * *

_Kanade spun in circles with her arms out, giggling madly as her boots clicked on the rock. “This is so cool, mama!” she laughed._

_“Kanade! Come back here,” her mother called. “This place is still an active work site. It’s dangerous!”_

_“Yes, mama,” she said, rolling her eyes. The cavern was wide and tall, with a sloping ceiling supported by thick wooden beams. Dozens of workers milled about, armed with rock hammers and paintbrushes, excavating the old grotto they had discovered there. Out of the dirt, gravel, and dust emerged a beautiful retreat in a peculiar variant of japanese architectural style._

_A man with wild, red hair approached them. “Kanade, Kotome!”_

_“Papa!” they called back, and rushed to hug him._

_“Oof!” he grunted as the red and brown blurs of his daughters nearly knocked him off his feet. He patted their heads. “You gotta let me go eventually, you two.”_

_Kanade released him, a wide grin on her face. Out of the corner of her eye, Kotome saw a brown-haired woman in a lab coat slip down one of the corridors, but in her excitement, she paid it no mind._

_“Iemitsu!” her mother called. “How are things here?” She smiled. “As you can see, I’ve brought our little explorers.”_

_“It’s all going well!” he called back, then turned to her daughters. “So what do you think of the grotto?”_

_“Is this what you and mama are working on, Papa?” Kanade asked, eyes sparkling. He nodded enthusiastically, and she looked around in wonder. “What is this place?”_

_“Well,” her dad began as he knelt down to look them in the eye. “A long, long time ago, a big bad warlord lived in Niigata. He had a fancy castle there, but he also had this secret hideyhole in Mount Minakami that he liked to keep all his treasures in.” Kanade and Kotome oohed and aahed at that. “That lord raided the coastlines of China, and which means we’re finding all kinds of Chinese artifacts.”_

_“But the real prize,” her mother said, “is a special mirror that was the pride of his collection.” She smiled, and pointed to a passageway. “Shénshòujìng’s very fragile, so we’re keeping it where we found it, in there.”_

_“I saw a lady go in there earlier!” Kotome said, a big happy grin on her face._

_“What?” Iemitsu said, his smile suddenly gone. He whipped around to look at the passageway. “Nobody’s supposed to go down there until the transport equipment gets here!”_

_A sudden crash made everyone jump. The assembled archeologists and students watched, paralyzed in horror as a shimmering creature slipped through the wall and raised its paddle-like hands menacingly as it slowly marched toward them. No one said a word, frozen in shock as the inhuman monster shuffled toward them. All at once in a cacophony of crashing equipment and screams, the excavation staff scrambled for the exit, only for blue, slug-like phantasmals to drip from the rocky ceiling and block the way._

_One of them pounced on her mother, and Kanade watched in horror as waves of grey and black spread across her body, before she crumbled to inanimate dust before she even had a chance to scream. The redhead stood frozen in place, unable to process what she’d just watched._ I’m going to die, _she thought._ I’m going to die!

_“Kanade, run!” Iemitsu grabbed her hand in a hurry and dragged her toward a dark corridor away from the main excavation site. Numb to the world, she let herself be pulled into the narrow, rocky passage. The darkness swallowed them whole._

_“Papa,” Kotome cried. “Mama…”_

_“Mama…” Kanade echoed weakly._

_A bright light shone before them, materializing into a drill-like spiral that punched through Isemitsu’s chest. Kanade and Kotome screamed in horror as their father disintegrated, only to cough furiously as his ashes choked their lungs._

_“Come on!” Kanade hackeded, pulling her sister away from the cloud._

_“Papa!” Kotome screamed. “PAPA!”_

_“PAPA’S DEAD!” Kanade screamed back in panic. With a hideous squelch, a pair of lobster-like humanoid Noise stepped out of the wall in front of them. The redhead screeched in fear and fell backward._

_“Sis!” Kotome reached down to help her up._

_“No, Kotome, RUN!” Kanade shrieked, but the Noise was faster._

_The glittering white pincer hardened into silvery steel, entering the physical realm and spearing through Kotome’s back, bursting through her chest in a shower of blood and ash. The younger girl’s eyes went dull as a surge of grey overtook her body._

_“I love you, sis…” her sister breathed, as her body turned to dust._

_Kanade lay there in shock as the ashes of her sister’s body fell over her. In a few minutes, everyone she had ever loved had been torn away from her. A spark of something ominous ignited in her heart, something she’d never felt before. Her fingers curled, and her lip curled in a growl. It felt primal. It felt animalistic. It felt like pain, like she couldn’t breathe, but at the same time, it felt like every one of her senses were sharpened, like her muscles were flooded with furious energy. Her first taste of intoxicating rage. “You… you bastards…”_

_The other Noise squeaked toward her, its pinchers raised. She scrambled backwards and grabbed her father’s rock hammer from his ashen remains. As the creature lunged toward her, its body flashed into physicality to make the kill. Kanade swung the tool at the creature, smashing its hands to dust. The pincers began to reform, but the frenzied girl was already moving past them. She drove the point into its faceplate before it could slip back into the phantom realm. With a crack like shattering ceramics, the plate broke into dust, but even as it tried to reform, she dragged the hammer downward, tearing the soot apart even further, until the Noise finally disintegrated._

_“I’ll kill them,” she sobbed in rage, tears running freely down her cheeks as she fell to her knees, beating the inanimate dust with the hammer again and again. “I’ll kill them all…”_

_And that was where they found her, kneeling in the remains, slowly, languidly bashing the dust, no longer sure whether it belonged to the Noise or her loved ones._

* * *

“So now you know why I’m so fucked up,” Kanade finished with a dry, humorless chuckle. She slumped to the ground on a nearby set of stairs. “They found me and dragged me to Section 2 in a straightjacket. Good thing, too: in that state, I probably would’ve ripped their heads off.”

Serena stood in shock. She’d seen her share of horrors in her childhood, but she’d never felt the raw terror of coming face to face with Noise without her Gear. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s been eight years,” she said. “Eight years since the Noise took everything from me.”

 _How can I possibly comfort her?_ Serena thought. “Kanade…” she said, sitting down beside her on the steps with her arms around her girlfriend.

“And then five years ago… after the concert…” she sniffled. “There was nobody to visit them. Nobody’s even looked at these graves in years.”

“Shhhhh,” Serena said. “We’re here now.” She reached into Kanade’s bag and withdrew a stack of three porcelain cups and a bundle of incense sticks. Kanade watched in stunned silence as Serena set up a cup on each grave and placed three sticks in each one.

“You know how to do this?” Kanade said in surprise as Serena lit the incense, filling the air with a sweet-smelling smoke.

“Kirika and Shirabe did this when they took me to visit Mom,” she said as she sat kneeled in front of the graves, her eyes closed. “Rei-san, Iemitsu-san? My name is Serena Cadenzavna Eve. I’m in love with your daughter.” Kanade’s eyes widened, her breath caught in her throat, and tears began to tug at the corners of her eyes. “She’s strong, beautiful, and wonderful… sometimes I wonder if I deserve her. She’s always there for me, when I’m hurt, when I’m tired, when I’m sad…”

Kanade knelt beside her. “Mom, Dad… hey. Sorry I haven’t visited in a while…” She took a deep breath as she placed her palms together. “I got… held up a bit. A lot’s changed in the last five years… the Noise are gone, the gods are dead…” she unclasped her hands and wrapped them around Serena. “...And I found love.” She snorted. “Wow, that was sappy.” 

Serena said nothing, instead opting to just snuggle closer to her beloved. “She’s my whole world,” Kanade said, now openly crying into Serena’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without her...”

“Kanade…” Serena breathed.

“So… yeah,” Kanade said, holding Serena and looking into her eyes. She looked at the smallest gravestone, the tears leaving a visible line of wetness down her face. “Hey, Koto. I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet.”

Serena turned and bowed to the gravestone, insofar as she could with how tightly Kanade was holding her. “Hello, Kotome-chan. I’m Serena. Your sister is… very special to me.” She put her arms back around Kanade. “I promise, I’ll take good care of her.”

Kanade sobbed into Serena’s neck. “I miss you all… I miss you so much.” Serena just held her, rocking back and forth as she ran her hand through Kanade’s hair. “I wonder… if you knew everything I’ve done… if you’d be proud of me…”

Serena pulled away and looked Kanade in the eye. “Of course they would.”

Kanade flinched. “But…”

Serena kissed her on the forehead. “Shhh. You’re strong. You’re kind. You’re beautiful.” She smiled slightly. “You single-handedly created the most powerful superhero the world has ever seen.”

Kanade frowned. “Yeah, by wedging a chunk of superheated magical metal in her heart.”

Serena continued regardless. “Think of all the people you’ve saved with your spear, all the people who’s spirits you’ve raised with your songs!” She leaned close, and they rubbed their noses together. “They couldn’t ask for a better daughter.”

Kanade tried desperately to blink back tears, but soon enough it overflowed and she pulled Serena close, bawling.

“Shhhhh,” Serena whispered, patting Kanade’s head. They sat there like that until long after the incense had burned out and the sun had begun to touch the horizon. 

Kanade sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Hey… it’s getting late.”

Serena didn’t respond. With a start, Kanade realized that her girlfriend had fallen asleep in her arms. She smiled, slung her bag over her shoulder, and picked her up gently. She pressed her forehead to hers and closed her eyes. “Thank you for coming with me today,” she whispered.

Serena stayed silent, but her lips curved into a gentle, contented smile.

**Author's Note:**

> There are two fics I’d like to cite for a couple of things I borrowed from them.  
> This fic takes some inspiration from a scene in Your Mess is Mine by tiny_gay_robot, where Chris is talking to the shrine in her apartment about Tsubasa moving in. I wanted to try out a scene of the two of them talking to a shrine just like Chris and Tsubasa do, since in this AU, this would be the first time in four-five years that Kanade had visited her parent’s graves.  
> As for the other: Kanade’s family is never named in the anime, however the name Kotome was used in Overture by SevenLol and Xesphanite as the name of Kanade’s little sister, and I decided to use it here. Kotome is written on the gravestone with the following Kanji: 琴 is the character representing a specific type of japanese harp called a koto, and 愛 is ‘love.’ This was part of the reason I really wanted to use that name: it follows the musical theme in the Wielder’s names.


End file.
